In the long perspective of the economic life of the American community, the four years of the First Nixon Administration belong to the middle range of achievement. When the noise and smoke of these years will have passed away, their prizes having been engrossed and their pains dulled in forgetfulness, men of resigned or complacent disposition will call this Normal. Others, less acquiescent or more aspiring, will call it Mediocre.

At a recent meeting of the editors of Worldview Richard Neuhaus enlivened the proceedings by another one of his acutely perspicacious political opinions. He opined that the White House appointment of General Haig proves that the United States is adopting the Peruvian military model of development. He is wrong. The true import of the Watergate affair is more sinister: The government of the United States is being taken over by multinational corporations under the control of the West German tourist industry.

Any observer schooled in New Left methods of analysis should, of course, have suspected something like this from the beginning. Why alt these Germans? Only bourgeois social scientists can be satisfied with an explanation in terms of a Novaldan resurgence of ethnic genius.

Quo Vadis Latin America?" is a question that disturbs many people, since nowhere else in the world do there exist so many revolutionary tensions. In order to reply to the question and to exercise influence on the future it is necessary to ask first: "Where do you come from, Latin America?" For the reality of each people is its present, plus the historical context from which it emerges. It is a history four hundred years old, made up of light and shadows, of some spectacular achievements in the past and, of disastrous failures. But it is now tense with expectations because the frustration these failures have bred announce dawn rather than twilight.

Is the Cuban revolution "good"? The answer to that question does not depend on "facts" alone. It depends also on the meaning we attach to the facts and on our willingness to emphasize one value at the expense of another. We make these choices, these decisions, in our daily lives. Revolutions, in this sense, are no diiferent. What is different is that they highlight the significance of choices made, and they increase the stakes of our political choices. One way to view a revolution is as an investment in politics in order to transform the weight and the meaning of large chunks of our nonpolitical lives, to change the choices we make, our way of making them and their significance.

The "Brazilian Model of Development" has been the subject of a good deal of comment and analysis during the past few years Some of those who once looked widi hope upon the experiments of the "democratic left" of the fifties as a potentially viable and dynamic alternative to Communist and totalitarian models for less developed countries have now begun to consider that the "modernizing military managers" might offer a more relevant model. Indeed, current interest seems to be in comparing the Chilean and Brazilian models in terms of social and human cost and benefit, though it is certainly too early for any conclusive judgments of net results in either case.

Of late, many quite popular opinions have struck me as exceedingly odd. For example, I just came across a pamphlet by Thomas Fenton entitled "Coffee—the Rules of the Game and You" (The Christophers, 1972). The gist of this plea, made in the name of religious concern, is a rehash of trade figures designed to prove that Latin America, as well as the rest of the world, is being "exploited" by prevailing levels of consumption in the developed world, as well as by "unfair" modes of international production and exchange. In effect, the supposition is that our simple pleasures—such as a morning cup of coffee—are tools for gouging some poor peasant in El Salvador or Brazil. Somehow, the argument seems to go, if I were only willing to pay just a few cents more for my coffee and my country were willing to "let" the South Americans build their own merchant fleet, the peasant would stop starving and his country would develop rapidly.

What is happening in Chile? Aside from the widely publicized "March of the Empty Pots" in December, 1971, and the revelations about interference in the 1970 elections, the American press and media have carried almost nothing about developments in Chile since Salvador Allende's installation two and a half years ago as the first freely elected Marxist president in the Western Hemisphere. Until recently book publishers were doing no better, but now a surprising number of new books on Chile, of varying quality and political orientation, provides the basis for some preliminary judgments, on the nature of the changes that have been taking place there in recent years.

Granted, there is a touch of the absurd in speaking of the present as the "aftermath" of the war in Vietnam. As the battered populations of Cambodia and Laos have discovered, American "peace with honor" in one part of Indochina has meant little more than a change in bombing targets. Nevertheless, presidential proclamations assure us that peace has been made and honor preserved, and during the first two months following the agreement ceremonially concluded in Paris these assurances fell upon our ears with almost the same regularity as the 110,000 tons of bombs dropped on Indochina. As the remnants of a once mighty peace movement can testify, the warwearied public has been only too willing to accept these assurances and close its eyes to the ugly realities that would threaten the welcome illusion.